BERKEL ON TOUR NOW WITH THE WILDERNESS OF MANITOBA WITH DATES IN TORONTO, CALGARY, AND MORE

TORONTO, ON – September 19, 2017 - Ahead of what would have been Leonard Cohen’s 83rd birthday on September 21st, singer-songwriter Jenny Berkel with Ryan Boldt of the Deep Dark Woods have shared their stunning cover of ”True Love Leaves No Traces.” LISTEN HERE.

On the track and choosing to cover it, Berkel says:

“I found out about Leonard Cohen’s death during a chilly evening walk in Toronto. I was heading down Bloor Street when my phone started buzzing. While I had been thinking about this day – and wondering what it would mean to me – for several years already, I wasn’t prepared for the simultaneous sense of loss and gratitude that overcame me. I didn’t grow up listening to folk music and can still clearly remember the first time I heard a Leonard Cohen song. It was “Famous Blue Raincoat” – I had just started my first year of university and was feeling very alone. One winter evening, a new friend sent me the song. I put it on, lay down on the floor, and closed my eyes. I can still remember the feeling it gave me. Cohen’s metaphors and imagery are evocative, sharp, and so different from what I had grown up listening to. That evening was already over a decade ago; several years and many Leonard Cohen listens later, I started writing my own songs. I’ve wanted to record one of his songs for years and am so happy to release “True Love Leaves No Traces” as a duet with Ryan Boldt of the Deep Dark Woods.”

Berkel is on the road this fall as a touring member of The Wilderness of Manitoba, along with opening a handful of shows as a solo act including this Wednesday, September 20 in Toronto at The Garrison. See below for full itinerary.

Since releasing her debut album, Here on a Wire, Berkel has been intoxicating listeners with her evocative songs and voice. Berkel’s writing is at once gentle and hard-hitting. Her lush and low voice ornaments her poetry with melodies that soar high and clear before spilling back down again. Berkel’s sophomore album, Pale Moon Kid, was recorded with gifted producer Daniel Romano and released across Canada in April 2016 (Pheromone Recordings) and across Europe in October 2016 (Popup Records). This glowing new collection reveals writing that has grown even sharper and more lyrical.

TORONTO, ON – September 5, 2017 – Following her announcement of headlining North American and European tours, Kelela is back today to share a new song. “Frontline”, the second offering from Kelela’s forthcoming debut album, is now available everywhere and follows lead single and video “LMK.”

“Frontline” originally debuted on HBO’s hit show Insecure which has recently become a destination for bold music programming and one of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows currently on air. It is currently available to stream or purchase at the link above.

Take Me Apart is due October 6th via Warp Records, and is available for pre-order now. Starting in October in Mexico City, Kelela will play shows across North America through November with Canadian dates in Toronto and Montreal, before heading to Europe for a slew of dates that will conclude in December in Amsterdam.

Hear “Frontline” and pre-order Take Me Apart above, and see below for the previously released video for “LMK,” full tour routing, album details, and further information about Kelela.

“Kelela has an excellent voice, and she employs it in ambitious ways, a dedication to craft that precedes any sonic innovation, not simply raising the bar but reminding lucky listeners where it might’ve once been.” - The New Yorker

“Kelela is not here to play – she makes that clear from the outset of her new video for the hook-up single ‘LMK.’” - NPR

“an empowered and liberating song that asserts not just a woman’s agency, but also Kelela’s power as an artist.” - Pitchfork

“‘LMK’ isn’t a flirtation – it’s a negotiation, close to an ultimatum.” - The New York Times

“These are the intonations of someone who has the music world’s attention, a new album on the way, and no time to play games.” - The Ringer

“Artists, guard your Song of the Summer contenders close: Kelela did not come to play.” - Vulture

With great anticipation, Kelela’s debut album emerges as an epic portrait of an artist spanning the past and future of R&B. In her hands, however, the genre knows no boundaries and so Take Me Apart exists as an absolutely singular and fearless addition to a canon of recent classics. From her very earliest work, honesty and vulnerability have been cornerstones of Kelela’s art – even when clad in the armor of the avant-garde electronics she so deftly inhabits – and Take Me Apart sees her double down on both the emotional intensity and resonance of her message as well as the sonic seeking she is renowned for.

On 2015′s acclaimed Hallucinogen EP, Kelela swept listeners along in the rush of ecstasy and the melancholic vapor trail of a hopeful, but ultimately doomed liaison. Hallucinogen would prove to be a turning point, and The New York Times would name it’s single, “Rewind”, one of the “25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going”. The EP’s oversized impact would ignite a period of kinetic worldwide live shows culminating in Kelela crisscrossing the globe on tour with The xx. In parallel with this, 2016 and early 2017 would see Kelela grace a handful of crucial records as a feature vocalist – from longtime ally Solange’s majestic A Seat At The Table, to Danny Brown’s immense Atrocity Exhibition and most recently, the star-studded Humanz from Gorillaz.

These appearances would be tantalizing signs leading the way to Take Me Apart. Amplifying the ideas explored on Hallucinogen, here Kelela treats relationships and their effects like a Matryoshka doll, unveiling layer after layer to find herself at the center. Expressing an honest vision of how we navigate dissolving ties with each other and yet remain sanguine for the next chance at love,the emotional ricochet is traced across the album’s narrative. Take Me Apart stands not only as an intensely personal chronicle, but also a defiant and turbulent statement direct from Kelela; “Despite it being a personal record, the politics of my identity informs how it sounds and how I choose to articulate my vulnerability and strength. I am a black woman, a second-generation Ethiopian-American, who grew up in the ‘burbs listening to R&B, Jazz and Björk. All of it comes out in one way or another.”

The process of crafting Take Me Apart embraced the approach of widely collaborative R&B, hip-hop and pop production while roaming a strange and wonderful path. Working with a cast of peers, Kelela deconstructs many results of their collaborations and builds them back up into pieces of a cohesive whole, effectively orchestrating these multitudes in aid of her singular vision. “It’s this tapestry I’ve knitted together that attracts different types of listeners and challenges them at the same time, often within the same song. That’s what I want to bring to my entire catalogue” says Kelela. Testament to this approach, the album opens with a stunning trio of high points from the low-slung mechanized swing of ‘Frontline’ to the kaleidoscopic splendor of ‘Waitin’ – by which point you’ve been pulled straight into the tale Kelela is weaving, and the warped and chaotic beauty of the title track before dropping into ‘Enough’ which sounds as if it could have been transmitted from a neon-lit jazz club in Akira’s Neo-Tokyo.

The timeless, zero-gravity ballad ‘Better’ sees Kelela at her most unadorned – baring her soul to a nameless other over subtly transforming piano and synth textures while first single ‘LMK’ is all staggering club swagger that manages to span the past 20 years of innovative R&B while still exploring another dimension of possibilities. These songs typify the melding of classic song-craft and inventive production approach at the album’s core, but it’s here where things take yet another exhilarating turn. ‘Truth or Dare’ has the brittle snap and vocal twists of a Neptunes track while ‘Blue Light’ sees Kelela weld her sweeping pleas to the warped sonic palette of Grime, pointing the way forward to a possible future of cybernetic soul.

Now we are swept into the slipstream of a pair tracks in ‘On And On’ and the otherworldly grandeur of ‘Turn To Dust’, which conjures images of the powerful and iconic diva of Besson’s The Fifth Element; and it’s a short trip to the unforgettable pneumatic gospel of album closer ‘Altadena’, a perfect uroboros link back to ‘Frontline’ to begin the saga all over again. At this point you’re left with the feeling that this trip through Take Me Apart is one you’ll be making many more times.

TORONTO, ON – August 17, 2017- It’s not unusual for best friends to form bands, and Grapell co-founders Emil Erstrand and Nils Nygårdh have been friends and bandmates since they were teenagers. What is unusual, though, is for that chemistry to translate so wholly into a timeless sound, a style so fully-formed it feels borne from a lifetime of collaboration. The Swedish duo’s debut album Crier does just that, walking a perfect tightrope between simplicity and sophistication. Give it even a passive listen and the vivid sense of romance proves hard to ignore. Dig a little deeper though, and you find more of love’s complexity, the tug-o-war between a person’s head and his heart. Crier will be released November 3rd on Roll Call Records. The first single “No Longer Free” was dropped early in the summer giving us a taste of what new music was to come.

Today My Old Kentucky Blog premiered the latest single “We Can Only Blame Ourselves” from Crier today, writing “… full of delicate, unabashed soul carried by rhythmic piano and covered in a coppery sheen that hits just before sundown. Simple sophistication comes to mind when describing their music and this track is no different. It sounds like song that could have been created at any point over the last 40 years making it timeless, yet refreshingly organic and nuanced in a time laptop producers get most of the attention.”

The road to Crier was a long one: Erstrand and Nygårdh formed their first band, Good Morning June, in high school. Describing it in hindsight as “five guys who couldn’t agree on anything,” they moved on to form Grapell, which started as a multi-piece outfit before intimately paring down to the two friends working as a duo. They enlisted other talented cohorts as they needed to, but the songwriting and vision is now theirs alone. In 2016 the duo released the Love Chamber EP which included ”Arrow” a track which set blogs and streaming services alight.

For their full-length, the duo decided to stick to what felt the most natural and recorded the album between their rehearsal space and Emil’s house. The result is an album as bold as it is smooth. Crier deals with themes of simplified love, romance and heartbreak; it’s arrangements are dynamic and bright, unique from song to song, but they also stick together perfectly to form a cohesive whole.

The recording process had its set backs. Deadlines passed and songs needed more time and attention, but it wasn’t just what was happening in the studio that led to delays. Erstrand explains how they managed to block out the noise, saying, “with a lot of things going on in the world, so much terrible stuff constantly taking up space in the papers, and also experiencing some horrors up close, it has sometimes been hard just focusing on songs about romantic love. But somewhere along the line it became really important to let yourself focus on only that. To create a little bubble where that remains being the most important thing.”

The songwriting on Crier is personal, but Grapell don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, rather, inviting the listener to make up their own minds and emotions as the songs wash over them. Erstrand tells us “If someone hears our music and feels something, that’s great… the best complement is when someone says that they have cried to a song you’ve made.”

Tracklist:

Crier
No Longer Free
Heartbreaker
We Can Only Blame Ourselves
Much Too Much
Torture By Recalling
On Our Sides
Your Silence
When The World Ends (I Want To Be With You)